A Tale of Two Thieves

As we approached Holy Week, the Lord had been leading me to contemplate the story commonly known as the Thief on the Cross – a short and familiar story found here in Luke 23:39-43.

39 One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” 40 But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? 41 We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.” 42 Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” 43 Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

I wanted to talk a bit about this story. But not simply to look at the story as part of the larger Easter narrative, or even to share some intellectual observations, nor as just a curious observer. No. I want to make the story personal to you and to me.

At this point, you are might be saying to yourself, “Yes, but I am neither a thief, nor am I facing a death sentence,” and in a temporal sense, you would probably be right about that.

But I would argue that one or the other of these two men, and their condition, represent all of us, in our own condition.

As we saw in the text from Luke, the story is not just about one criminal, but actually two criminals or thieves, being crucified, “one on the right and the other on the left” of Christ. The actual word used has been translated as thief, criminal, malefactor, robber, and rebel - even revolutionary.

But whatever their specific crimes, both men had been convicted of a capital crime against the Roman state and faced the most serious known method of punishment. As Matthew (27:44) and Mark (15:32) point out, both men initially mocked Jesus.

The first criminal, sometimes known as the penitent thief, was a witness to all of the humiliation and suffering endured by the one who proclaimed Himself to be the Messiah – and observed that He did not lash out, spew vile curses, act in his own defense... or, if His claims about Himself were true, attempt to save himself by calling down fire and the wrath of heaven upon his persecutors. Having seen this all – this demonic outpouring of injustice on the innocent one hanging next to him – he reached deep within his conscience to recall a long-suppressed fear of God. He came to realize his own depravity and unworthiness in the presence of the Holy Son of God.

At this point, he looks into the face of the Savior, confesses, and begs for mercy.

The tragedy of the second, unrepentant thief is that he experienced everything his compatriot experienced. He even felt the same nails that hung Christ to the cross. He heard Jesus' utterances from the cross, the same as his companion. He had witnessed the exchange between Jesus and first thief. And yet this rebel was unmoved. He was too proud. He refused to humble himself and confess either his own guilt or even Christ's innocence.

He was fatefully willing to march to his death and judgment singing (as popularized by the Frank Sinatra song) “I did it my way.”

This is all the more sad because the Scriptures say it is so simple: If you confess with your mouth “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. - Romans 10:9

But I want to take us back to the initial objection, that defensive objection, that "I am certainly not a criminal worthy of death like these two malefactors were."

Quite honestly, all of us are – or were at one time – just like one or the other of these two men. Criminals, thieves, and rebels against God: Sinners all, as Romans chapter 3, verse 23 says, All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

We are all under the condemnation of our sins against a holy God, but still having the power to humble ourselves, repent, and ask for forgiveness – or more tragically – proudly continue on our path toward the finality of death where we will face judgment and hell.

Our holy God is very generous in his terms for those who wish to be redeemed and reconciled to Him, but He does not negotiate or entertain counter-offers. As it says in John 14:6 : Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

My friend, I urge you then even this day, to consider carefully, judge yourself rightly, and humble yourself necessarily. Choose today to be like this penitent thief.

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. - John 1:9

 

Like Sodom and Gomorrah - but with Lakes, Rocks, and Cows

With that soothing baritone voice of his and a Santa Claus-like physique, one could easily assume Minnesota DFL Governor Tim Walz was harmless.  And you'd be very wrong.

In an age of hyperbole, even by 'Minnesota nice' standards, it is hardly understatement to say he is a dangerous, tyrannical extremist.  Walz came on the scene in 2018 with a campaign giving lip service to a slogan "One Minnesota", but it didn't take him - or voters - long to realize his radical policies were extremely unpopular in outstate Minnesota and that his base of support was a handful of Democrat stronghold urban counties in the Twin Cities metro, plus Duluth and Rochester. For the most part, suburban and rural areas - the land of "mostly rocks and cows" as he so famously dismissed them - rejected his divisive talk and disastrous policy prescriptions.

Not satisfied with the typical Democrat favorite pet projects, such as expanding the already bloated welfare state, funding pork-barrel spending construction projects, and dumbing down the education system, Walz had his sights set on much more far reaching structural changes, but was held back, by a legislature that his party didn't fully control.  At least until COVID, where we got our first true glimpse of a man acquiring a taste for tyrannical power - a man who would come to be affectionately known to some as 'Timmy the Tyrant'.  Using ambiguous and arcane emergency rules, Walz assumed near marshal law status, by continuing to extend his peacetime emergency powers for well over a year beyond when any true COVID emergency may have possibly existed.

Then came the unthinkable.

Rather than being punished by voters for his divisive, erratic, and downright ineffective leadership during the George Floyd riots, Feeding Our Future scandal, and COVID, Walz was inexplicably swept back into office and given a Democrat majority in both chambers of the legislature to back him.  They quickly conspired to seize on the opportunity for action to turn our charming land of 10,000 lakes into a diabolical landscape of 10,000 boiling cauldrons of corrosive far-left politics.

In a flurry of activity, all hell literally broke loose as the 2023 legislative session began.  Without any effective checks and balances.  Walz and his party wasted no time enacting an agenda that seemed to many of us "rocks and cows" types, too extreme for even Satan himself.

Revealing their top priority - death and destruction - the first bill from both chambers (HF1/SF1) removed virtually all abortion safeguards or restrictions and guaranteed gruesome child-killing for any or no particular reason, up until the moment of birth. Walz only too happily signed it into law.  Keep in mind that was despite denying a charge from his campaign opponent that he supported abortion up to the moment of birth and claiming that he supported maintaining current abortion laws. 1  (The bill followed nicely in the footsteps of his 2022 executive order which gave state sanction to 'abortion tourism' by refusing to cooperate with neighboring states which don't allow the grisly procedures. 2 )

Although I'm not going to take time to outline all the bad and outright evil policies and laws inflicted upon Minnesotans by Governor Walz (expensive carbon-free electricity, felon voting, and illegal alien driver's licenses immediately come to mind), we must mention his most egregious action of all, at least to this point:  Walz's 'Gender Transition' executive order.

Executive order 23-03, signed on Wednesday, March 8, leapfrogs the legislature and effectively transforms Minnesota into a sanctuary state for so-called gender transitions. The order guarantees access - and punishes denial of services - to what they euphemistically call "gender affirming healthcare services." 3  (A writer for Hot Air points out that it even goes to the lengths of protecting non-custodial parents from consequences for kidnapping a child and bringing them to Minnesota for the purposes of receiving such 'services.' 4)

Their deliberately vague and obfuscatory language deserves to be unpacked.  Completely unheard of a decade ago, the term "gender affirming healthcare services", encompasses a range of horrific practices and procedures, of which I hesitate to even mention, such as the administration of cross-sex hormones, powerful and still not fully tested puberty blocking drugs, genital mutilation surgeries, breast removals, and castration of children.  Indeed Dr. Mengele would be proud of this governor and his administration!

A boy insists he is a girl so he can shower with the cheerleaders?  Great!  A girl wants to be a boy, because the other girls in her class are mean to her?  We can make that happen!  Your 2nd grade son says he wants to be a pirate, so they surgically remove an eye from it's socket and give him a patch and amputate half his leg to fit him with a pegleg.  That is doable!  Your kindergarten daughter says she wishes she were a purple polka-dotted unicorn... well you see where this foray into fantasy land goes.

And so, we have Walz's Lt. Governor, Peggy Flanigan, out there publicly insisting that she knows "what it means to be a good parent," emphatically claiming "it is our job as grown-ups to listen and believe" whatever a child may say about who or what they are. 5   For the extremists in charge, it has nothing to do with providing wise guidance and religious direction to children through times of trouble and confusion.  Instead, she insists logic, reason, genetic science, and all that is true must be tossed aside in a dogged pursuit of the lunatic left's cause du jour.

The intent of these things is not to affirm genetic science, X and Y chromosomes, or a reality-based concept of male and female, but rather to obscure them.  This done, not in the name of truth, but in the name of politically motivated theories revolving around gender fluidity - a cause celebre of the far left LGBTQ+ABCXYZ sexual deviancy movement.

Having received both public recognition and government sanction to their unholy unions, and left unsatisfied even by the continuous positive publicity being puffed in the legacy media and pop culture, the sexual deviancy movement continues to progress into evermore sinister areas of depravity such as indoctrination, recruitment, molestation, and even mutilation of children.  In the case of minors, the innocent-sounding term, "gender-affirming care" actually cares nothing about the actual havoc raised in the lives of it's young, confused, or mentally ill victims.  There is a profitable and sexually-charged political agenda to be advanced at their expense.    

In actuality, the result is little more than the official enabling and even celebrating of an untreated mental disorder - in this case, one called gender dysphoria. 

While it may be hard to even fathom this depth of evil by those of us in the land of rocks and cows, it has been adopted wholesale from a political party and it's leader in St. Paul that has a central vision of sexual confusion, immorality, and mutilation.  Sadly, it's portends a legacy of broken lives, destruction, and death that targets children, who will bear the imprint for decades hereafter.

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1 - https://minnesotareformer.com/briefs/gov-tim-walz-does-not-support-abortion-up-to-the-moment-of-birth-contrary-to-jensen-claim/

2 - https://m.startribune.com/small-devoted-group-at-state-capitol-shares-in-gratitude-for-roe-being-overturned/600185247/

3 - https://alphanews.org/gov-walz-signs-order-making-state-a-sanctuary-for-gender-transitions/

4 - https://hotair.com/david-strom/2023/03/09/minnesota-about-to-become-a-kidnapping-sanctuary-state-n535743 

5 - https://alphanews.org/flanagan-good-parents-believe-kids-when-they-tell-us-who-they-are/

Their Most Sacred Sacrament

If there was any ambivalence or doubt left about the diabolical nature of the Democrat party's agenda - or for that matter, the depth of depravity required of those who aspire to be one of the party's elected officials - well, all doubt about it was erased last week.  An uncomplicated bill was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives which simply affirmed the common understanding among civilized people that the attending medical personal would provide children with the necessary postnatal medical care after a successful delivery.

As Lifenews reported:  "The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act requires that, when a baby is born alive following an abortion, health care practitioners must exercise the same degree of professional skill and care that would be offered to any other child born alive at the same gestational age."

And yet, 210 Democrats voted against the measure.

How could that be?  Had all the House Democrats just been on a whisky drinking and crack smoking bender in the Congressional Cloakroom and were too high to comprehend the issue before them?  Or perhaps they were distracted by their planning meetings for the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Trump post-presidential impeachment debacles?  Or maybe they were simply confused about which bill it was that they were casting their vote on?  Sadly, all of those excuses could be understandable, were they actually the reason.

One would think that this would be a no-brainer;. An easy, albeit rare, unanimous "Yes" vote in an age characterized by political acrimony.  Unless, of course, you are a Democrat, in which case you will fight any perceived threat to the few remaining tenets of your unholy religious cult.

Thankfully, the bill passed without their help.  Yet only one lone House Democrat voted in favor the bill that would simply mandate medical attention for children who survive an abortion and live through the trauma of it, (in actuality, these are children who have survived a murder attempt at the hands of an unethical abortionist) ...and as best I can tell, it was solely due to their peculiar religious beliefs.

We have seen time and time again that for Democrats, the ends justify the means, there are simply no ethical guardrails or guideposts for the lunatic left.  Thus as a political party, they have come to a place where no principle within their party platform is sacrosanct in their diabolical quest for control.  Almost none, that is.  You see, they aren't quite as godless as they seem.  There still is one principle - one exception to the rule.

The bedrock principle, the seemingly single non-negotiable tenet, the unwavering and supreme precept - serving as the centerpiece of their death-cultic creed - is their absolute and unquestioning support for abortion for any or no reason.  The cruel and barbaric gods the Democrats serve demand child sacrifice on the Planned Parenthood altar to appease their diabolical bloodlust.  And it rivals, if not surpasses, anything the Aztecs, Incas, or Mayans may have engaged in.

No challenge to that absolute guiding principle can be tolerated.  No compromises can be entertained.  No tactic is too extreme in the defense of their most sacred sacrament - even to the point of a full-throated support of infanticide by refusing medical care to infants.

Abortion has become the most sacred of Democrat Party sacraments.

 

https://www.lifenews.com/2023/01/12/210-democrats-voted-to-deny-medical-care-to-babies-who-survive-abortions/